Free Internet Press Newsletter - Saturday February 17 2007 - (813)

Saturday February 17 2007 edition
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Putin Hands Chechnya Control To Militia Leader 2007-02-17 01:40:26 Ramzan Kadyrov, a former rebel fighter accused of widespread human rights abuses, took control of Chechnya Friday after being elevated from prime minister to president of the war-ravaged Russian republic. Kadyrov, 30, who controls a militia of thousands, owns a pet tiger and is said to have tortured one opponent with a blow torch, was promoted by the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, late on Thursday. Kadyrov's predecessor and long-time competitor, Alu Alkhanov, was ushered aside to a job the federal justice ministry. The promotion marked a coup for a young tough who has transformed Grozny into a shrine to himself with his portrait gazing down from billboards on street corners. It followed months of rumors, and intense speculation in the past two weeks, but Kadyrov's rise to acting president still provoked outrage among critics who accuse his armed units of beating, kidnapping and murdering suspected militants. Read The Full Story Tiny Frog In Amber May Be 25 Million Years Old 2007-02-17 01:39:55 A miner in the state of Chiapas found a tiny tree frog that has been preserved in amber for 25 million years, a researcher said. If authenticated, the preserved frog would be the first of its kind found in Mexico, according to David Grimaldi, a biologist and curator at the American Museum of Natural History, who was not involved in the find. The chunk of amber containing the frog, less than half an inch long, was uncovered by a miner in Mexico's southern Chiapas state in 2005 and was bought by a private collector, who lent it to scientists for study. A few other preserved frogs have been found in chunks of amber - a stone formed by ancient tree sap - mostly in the Dominican Republic. Like those, the frog found in Chiapas appears to be of the genus Craugastor, whose descendants still inhabit the region, said biologist Gerardo Carbot of the Chiapas Natural History and Ecology Institute. Carbot announced the discovery this week. The scientist said the frog lived about 25 million years ago, based on the geological strata where the amber was found. Read The Full Story Italy Idicts 26 Americans, Many From CIA, In '03 Rendition Abduction 2007-02-17 01:39:03 An Italian judge indicted 26 Americans on Friday, most of them C.I.A. officers, in what will become the first trial of the American program of secretly whisking away terror suspects. Italy'sformer top spy was also indicted. Despite the indictment, issued by a judge in Milan, it is unlikely that any of the Americans, one of whom is an Air Force colonel, will ever face trial here. The trial is expected to take place in June. The indictments came in connection with the case of a radical Egyptian cleric, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr. The cleric, known as Abu Omar, disappeared near his mosque in Milan on Feb. 17, 2003, and said he was kidnapped. He was freed this week from jail in Egypt, where he says he was taken and tortured. Read The Full Story January Housing Starts Plummet To Lowest Level In A Decade 2007-02-16 16:33:38 Housing starts dropped to their lowest level in a decade last month and permits for new construction declined as well, pointing to continued weakness in a sector of the economy that can drag down growth overall. The Commerce Department reported Friday that the pace of homebuilding dropped more than 14 percent in January compared to the month before, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.4 million. That's the slowest annual rate since the late 1990s. Permits for new construction fell to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,568,000 -- a drop of 3 percent over the prior month and more than 28 percent over the year before. The government statistics follow release of a study by the National Association of Realtors showing that home prices in about half of the country's cities fell in the last three months of 2006 compared to the year before - the first time the group documented such a decline in the 28 years it has collected data. The Washington area was among the losers: The average price of homes sold in the last three months of 2006 fell 2.6 percent, to $421,600, compared to the year before. Read The Full Story	Rice Grilled On $6 Billion Funding Request For Iraq, Afghanistan 2007-02-17 01:40:10 Skeptical lawmakers Friday demanded a detailed accounting of how Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice plans to spend $6 billion in supplemental funds that the administration has asked for the State Department this year, much of it for Iraq and Afghanistan. "I think you've got a lot of explaining to do," Rep. David R. Obey (D-Wisconsin) told Rice at a hearing of the House Appropriations subcommittee on state and foreign operations. "A huge majority of the funds in the supplemental are for military, not political or economic or reconstructive, purposes." Both Republicans and Democrats asked pointed questions about the rising cost of efforts that seem to be failing, despite newly announced U.S. strategies for both countries. Even as the administration has asked for more money, Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Virginia) told Rice, it ought to increase its diplomatic engagement with Iraq's neighbors in the Middle East. "I plead with you, I beg of you," said Wolf, "if we're going to ask a young man or woman in our military to go to Iraq three different times, it's not asking too much ... to send somebody to engage with regard to the Syrians." Read The Full Story 13 Injured In Texas Refinery Blaze 2007-02-17 01:39:35 An explosion rocked a west Texas refinery Friday, injuring at least 13 people and sparking a blaze that sent a huge black cloud billowing into the sky. Three people with burns were in critical condition Friday night, a nursing supervisor said. Ten others were hospitalized, mostly for smoke inhalation, a hospital official said. No fatalities were reported and all employees at the Valero McKee Refinery were accounted for, said Valero Energy Corp. More than 400 workers were evacuated from the Valero McKee Refinery after the explosion, authorities said. Read The Full Story Rove Aide Won't Seek Arkansas Job 2007-02-16 16:33:50 Tim Griffin, the former aide to presidential adviser Karl Rove who has been at the center of a political storm over U.S. attorney firings, says he will not seek the nomination to be chief prosecutor in Little Rock, Ark. Griffin, 38, a former military lawyer who worked for Rove and the Republican National Committee, said last night that opposition from Democrats, including Arkansas Sens. Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor, made it unlikely he could be confirmed for the job. "I don't think there's any way I could get fair treatment by Sen. Pryor or others on the Judiciary Committee," Griffin told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, which first reported Griffin's decision. He added that submitting his name to the Senate for confirmation "would be like volunteering to stand in front of a firing squad in the middle of a three-ring circus". Griffin's decision to step aside is the latest development in an ongoing controversy over the firings of seven U.S. attorneys by the Justice Department, which has angered lawmakers of both parties and prompted a battle over the attorney general's power to name replacements. Read The Full Story U.S. House Passes Measure Opposing Troop Surge 2007-02-16 16:33:24 Capping four days of passionate, often angry debate, the House delivered President Bush its first rebuke since the Iraq war was launched nearly four years ago, voting 246 to 182 to oppose the administration's planned deployment of 21,500 additional combat troops to Iraq. Seventeen Republicans joined 229 Democrats to approve a resolution that expresses support for U.S. combat forces but opposes the additional deployments. Two Democrats opposed the measure. Although nonbinding, both proponents and opponents predicted the consequences of the vote would be enormous as the debate came to a close yesterday with a crescendo. Democrats claimed it would begin to turn the political tide so decisively that the president will have to begin bringing U.S. forces home, while Republicans warned darkly that Islamic terrorists will be emboldened at the expense of not only American lives but also America's way of life. Read The Full Story
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